News and Policy Updates

Federal Grant Oversight

CUNY International Research and Education Forum

The first CUNY International Research and Education Forum will be held on November 8th at The Graduate Center. The forum brings together CUNY scientists interested in international research, calling for collaborations beyond the lines of disciplines and nationalities. It provides an opportunity to both showcase world-class research and education at CUNY and to develop and improve existing models of international collaboration. The forum offers a unique opportunity for researchers, faculty, and graduate/doctoral students to dialogue with and to develop professional relationships with foreign research administrators, ultimately leading to foreign collaborations with great scientific advances.

2017 OMB Compliance Supplement

Time and Leave Policy

Dear Principal Investigators and Project Directors,
The Research Foundation’s Board of Directors has amended the Time and Leave policy 506-G Time and Leave Benefits for All Research Foundation Employees (employee, PI, or GO login required). The policy has been amended to clarify the overall sick leave benefits offered by the Research Foundation and to expand on New York City Earned Sick Time Act (ESTA) provisions.
Here is what you need to know regarding the changes:

The New York City Earned Sick Time Act (ESTA) requires employers to provide employees with a minimum of 40 sick leave hours during a calendar year. The sick leave can be used for the care of the employee or a family member.

To be in compliance with the New York City Earned Sick Time Act (ESTA), the first 40 hours of sick leave used by a RFCUNY employee (for any purpose) is designated as ESTA Leave.

However, RFCUNY provides sick leave benefits beyond ESTA leave. Under RFCUNY’s time and leave policy, employees can take up to 40 hours of sick leave in a calendar year for the care of a family member, whether it is the first 40 or the last 40 hours of their accrued sick leave. A family member is defined as:

Child

Grandchild

Spouse

Domestic partner

Parent

Grandparent

Child or parent of an employee’s spouse or domestic partner

Sibling (including a half, adopted, or step sibling)

If your employees utilize sick leave hours to care for a family member, please have them indicate this time as SLFM (Sick Leave Family Member) in the e-Timesheet system in the Comments section of the timesheet. Please note we are currently working on an e-Timesheet system modification to include a sick leave drop down where the sick leave can be designated as ‘self’ or ‘family member’
For questions regarding the policy changes, please contact Crawford Grell at Crawford_Grell@rfcuny.org.

Updated Uniform Guidance FAQs

House Bill Gives NIH 3% Raise, Blocks Cuts to Overhead Payments

The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH's) budget would get a modest 3.2% raise, to $35.2 billion, in a draft spending bill released by a House of Representatives committee today. To the relief of U.S. research universities, the measure would also explicitly block a proposal by the Trump administration to slash by two-thirds the payments that NIH disburses to cover the overhead costs of the research it funds. Furthermore, the bill ignores a Trump plan to abolish NIH’s widely lauded global health center. Full Text.

Policy Update

NIH Abandons Grant Cap, Offers New Help to Younger Scientists

After fierce pushback from many researchers, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, is dropping a 1-month-old plan to spread funds to more investigators by capping the amount of support any individual scientist could receive. Instead, NIH is creating a new fund that will eventually devote $1 billion a year—about 3% of the agency's current $34 billion budget—specifically to funding proposals from early- and midcareer scientists. The new plan, unveiled on 8 June, is a stunning shift from the earlier policy, which would have limited a principal investigator's support to the equivalent of three standard R01 research grants. The new program will free up funds for about 2400 grants for younger scientists, far more than the original cap plan. Full Text.

Policy Update

This memorandum, which has been prepared in close consultation with CUNY, establishes guidelines consistent with Federal and State regulations and the University’s and RFCUNY’s policies for allowable compensation that can be paid to the University and/or CUNY faculty and staff from sponsored projects awarded to the University and administered by the RFCUNY. The following memorandum addresses sponsored funding for:

Full‐time CUNY faculty Reassigned/Released Time and Overload

Full‐time CUNY faculty summer months work

Full‐time CUNY faculty fellowship and other leaves

Adjuncts

Full‐time CUNY non‐faculty employees

Honoraria, stipends and other miscellaneous payments

NSF Update

The following information is of particular importance to current CMMI awardees and to persons who have pending proposals with CMMI. This summer, NSF will move from its current location in Arlington to a new location in Alexandria, Virginia, mandating that the NSF financial system be shut down during the last weeks of the fiscal year. As a result, all financial actions such as awards must be completed well prior to the end of the fiscal year. The NSF financial system bars actions on proposals for which the PI or a co-PI has an outstanding or overdue annual or final report on any NSF award. If you have a pending award action that is blocked by an overdue report, you will not get the award. Please be sure that all reports that are due on or before August 31 for all NSF awards for which you are a PI or co-PI are submitted by June 15 at the latest. (George Hazelrigg, Deputy Division Director, CMMI)

In it, D. Butlers offers the following (p. 435): "A checklist to identify reputable publishers--How to perform due diligence before submitting to a journal or publisher:

● Check that the publisher provides full, verifiable contact information, including address, on the journal site. Be cautious of those that provide only web contact forms.

● Check that a journal’s editorial board lists recognized experts with full affiliations. Contact some of them and ask about their experience with the journal or publisher.

● Check that the journal prominently displays its policy for author fees.

● Be wary of e-mail invitations to submit to journals or to become editorial board members.

● Read some of the journal’s published articles and assess their quality. Contact past authors to ask about their experience.

● Check that a journal’s peer-review process is clearly described and try to confirm that a claimed impact factor is correct.

● Find out whether the journal is a member of an industry association that vets its members, such as the Directory of Open Access Journals (www.doaj.org) or the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (www.oaspa.org).

● Use common sense, as you would when shopping online: if something looks fishy, proceed with caution".

11th Annual Grants Recognition Reception

The Office of Grants/Sponsored Programs are proud to honor the faculty and staff who have received, administered, pursued grant awards between 2016-2017, and acknowledge the efforts of colleagues who have made significant contributions to grant-funded programs at Queensborough.